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Other documents in English
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Fifty years after the foundation of the Fourth International - What perspectives for internationalist revolutionaries today? Pamphlet published by the ICU
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winter 1988
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السابق
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التالي
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Towards an era of social crisis and revolution
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The poor countries have been first to foot the bill for the world capitalist crisis and in the most brutal way. As a result
there were a whole string of hunger riots in the early 80's, in Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Tunis, Casablanca, etc.: the
list is in fact much longer.
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Since then things have got worse. In other countries the hunger riots have been replaced with a series of social upsurges. In
Haiti, in the Philippines, in Korea, in Burma, they have raised the problem of the social revolution in a way which is not so
remote from the way it was raised in Russia in 1905 or in February 1917.
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More and more strikes have taken place in the hardest hit European countries, like Romania, Poland, Yugoslavia...and even in
Britain.
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We are already in a stage of the crisis - started six or seven years ago - when the imperialist governments, led by the USA,
have jointly chosen to issue a second bill - only this time both the poor countries and the poorest layers of the rich countries
are expected to pay.
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The Western bougeoisies are now waging a conscious economic war against their proletariat. Building on the threat of
unemployment, they are trying to force them into accepting living conditions which have been so far considered as a feature of
the Third World: precarious employment, casual jobs, low wages, reduced benefits of all kinds, in particular reduced
unemployment benefit when not slashed altogether.
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As usual North America has shown the way. The US governments have boasted of having defeated unemployment. In reality they have
only created a situation where poverty and homeless are spreading from the unemployed to those in work. Today, in the USA, one
can be working while being poor, really poor!
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All these strikes, the potential revolutions which are taking place thousands of miles away and which we see only on television
for the time being, could well belong to the near future of the working class in the rich countries - the countries which still
hold three quarters of the world economic power despite their much smaller population.
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This means that the period of social calm, when the Western working class was domesticated at the expense of its Third World
brothers, is coming to a close.
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As for the polite gestures which Reagan and Gorbachev are exchanging, they should fool no-one. The present detente between the
USA and the USSR shows a systematic attempt at settling a number of conflicts and at defusing some of the powder kegs inherited
from the 1945 Yalta conference and from decolonisation. It is probably just another Yalta, in the political and social spheres,
in other words a mutual agreement between the USA and the USSR aimed at preparing for future explosions, which will leave both
regimes a free hand to deal with their own areas.
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This of course is only possible as long as they can rely on absolute social stability (but for how long?) both in the rich
Western countries and in the USSR itself.
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السابق
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التالي
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أعلى الصفحة
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